The Tears of God:
Grief as an Opening to the Divine 

Presented by
Robert Romanyshyn, Ph.D. 

December 15, 2000

 

Personal loss, particularly the death of a loved one, shatters one's life and one's world.  In the early part of grief, and on through the long, slow winter of mourning, we exist with neither guarantee nor even promise that life or love will ever come again.  And yet, it can. Our personal loss can become an occasion for deep transformation if only we surrender to the grieving process rather than rushing to get through it.

 

In this lecture, Robert Romanyshyn, author of The Soul in Grief: Love, Death and Transformation, describes how the surrender to the grieving process brings one face to face with the figure of the Orphan.  In this encounter with the grieving process our feeling of personal loss first deepens; we are embarking on a journey of homecoming and relying on the,figure of the Orphan, the most homeless of all, to guide us home.  Much work needs to be done…homework.

 

Grief is homework, and this journey towards home unfolds to reveal our soul's deep hunger for the presence of the Divine.  But wonder of wonders, even miracle of miracles, we come to recognize that our hunger for God's presence is matched by God's hunger for us.  We see the tears of human grief and then find their reflection in the tears of God.  In this mirroring, the face of God and our human face shine as the face of the Beloved.

 

When we endure the grieving process, and not just try to rush through it, we discover we grieve because we dared to love.  We further discover that we can love again in an expanded way, less ruled by fear, because we have taken the time to grieve.

 

Dr. Romanyshyn's new book will be available at the lecture.

 

Robert D. Romanyshyn, Ph.D. is an author, teacher, and international lecturer.  In addition to three books, he has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes.  Dr. Romanyshyn has been described as a master story teller who expresses the insights of the soul with the voice of a poet.  His primary interest lies in being a spokesperson for the marginalized and neglected values of the soul, including its longing for beauty, its desire for a sense of the sacred, and its hunger to remember its instinctual, vegetative, and mineral roots in nature.

 

Dr. Romanyshyn is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute and lives with his wife, Veronica, and two of their four children in Summerland, California.